British Prime Minister Keir Starmer gives an interview to the media while attending the 79th United Nations General Assembly at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, USA, on September 25, 2024.
Leon Neal | Via Reuters
LONDON – The United Kingdom wants to build a home-grown challenger to OpenAI and drastically increase the nation’s computing infrastructure, while Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government wants to become a global leader in artificial intelligence.
Starmer is due to visit Bristol, England, on Monday to announce the pledge, which follows work by British tech investor Matt Clifford to establish an “Artificial Intelligence Opportunities Action Plan”. The plan aims to help the UK harness the potential of artificial intelligence.
The government is primarily looking to expand data center capacity across the UK to encourage developers of powerful AI models who rely on high-performance computing equipment located in remote locations to train and run their systems.
A target has been set to increase “sovereign” or public sector computing capacity in the UK twentyfold by 2030. As part of that pledge, the government will begin opening up access to AI research resources, an initiative aimed at strengthening the UK’s computing infrastructure.
Starmer administration last year it reversed a £1.3bn taxpayer-funded spending commitment toward two significant computer initiatives to prioritize other fiscal plans. The projects, the AI Research Resource and the next-generation “exascale” supercomputer, were promised under Starmer’s predecessor, Rishi Sunak.
Sovereign artificial intelligence has become a hot topic for policy makersespecially in Europe. The term refers to the idea that technologies key to economic growth and national security should be built and developed in the countries where people adopt them.
To further strengthen Britain’s computing infrastructure, the government has also committed to setting up several AI “growth zones”, where planning permission rules will be relaxed in certain locations to allow the creation of new data centres.
In the meantime, an “Energy Council for Artificial Intelligence” made up of industry leaders in energy and artificial intelligence will be established to explore the role of renewable and low-carbon energy sources, such as nuclear.
Creating a challenger to OpenAI
The last major initiative proposed by the UK Government was the creation of domestic artificial intelligence “champions”. and of similar proportions to the American tech giants responsible for the underlying AI models that power today’s generative AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Britain plans to use AI growth zones and a newly established national data library to link public institutions — such as universities — to improve the country’s ability to create “sovereign” AI models that don’t rely on Silicon Valley.
It is worth emphasizing that the UK faces serious challenges in its effort to create an effective alternative to OpenAI. For one, several entrepreneurs in the country have complained about funding challenges that make it difficult for startups in the country to raise the money available for AI success stories.
Many UK founders and venture capitalists have called on the country’s pension funds to allocate more of their portfolios to riskier, growth-focused startups — a reform the government has implemented committed to pushing previously.
“In the UK, there’s $7 trillion in this pocket,” Magnus Grimeland, CEO and founder of venture capital firm Antler, told CNBC in an interview last year. “Imagine taking just 5% of that and allocating it to innovation – you’ll solve the problem.”
Britain’s tech leaders have nevertheless generally praised the government’s AI action plan. Zahra Bahrololoumi, head of Salesforce in the UK, told CNBC that the plan is a “forward-thinking strategy”, adding that she is encouraged by the government’s “bold vision for AI and emphasis on transparency, security and collaboration”.
Chintan Patel, Cisco’s chief technology officer in the UK, said he was “encouraged” by the action plan. “Having a clearly defined roadmap is critical for the UK to achieve its ambition to become an AI superpower and a leading destination for AI investment,” he said.
Britain does not yet have formal regulations for AI. The Starmer government has said this before plans to draft legislation for AI — but details remain thin.
Last month the government announced a consultation on measures to regulate the use of copyrighted content for training AI models.
More generally, the UK presents a differentiated regulatory regime from the EU post-Brexit as a positive factor — meaning it can introduce regulatory oversight for AI, but in a way that is less stringent than the EU, which has taken more takes a hard approach to technology regulation with its Artificial Intelligence Act.
